Jon Husband has been thinking about the great transition from Hierarchy to Wirearchy for longer than most. I call him the "Grandfather".
The morning after the election, that I had followed not on the mainstream media but via Twitter on Tweetdeck, I called Jon to ask him to talk about how this transition will take place from a culture where only a few at the top held the information to one where most of us will know most of what is going on.
Here is his response.
And for those of us who like to read as well as to listen: here is a precis.
Jon starts with his own transition. He was earlier than the innovator in the Tipping Point scale. He had to leave the old system back in the 1980's when there was no web and no place to go. Like the prophets of old, he had to wander for a few years in the wilderness. This is the act of a brave man who leaves only knowing that he cannot stay.
His vision of Wirearchy was one of those "Shower Moments" - If a Hierarchy is a set of social rules that restricts the information and so the power to the elite, then a Wirearchy is a set of rules - Jon calls them "a set of organizing principles" - that govern how a lot of people share information and so power.
He recognizes that most of us are embedded in the Matrix and don't even know how much we are trapped by the system. I asked him how we get out of this trap.
Of course it would be easy to offer up the FIVE BIG IDEAS etc. But Jon is more considered than that. He suggests that our mindset is changed by having new habits that enable us to learn for ourselves what the new is.
So every time we use a wiki, share a post like this, use Amazon, buy on Etsy we train ourselves to see the world and our place in it differently. Over time we see that this sharing and this immediacy is better and we start to lose faith in the central authorities.
We laughed about the election coverage of the media. It was so much better hearing what was going on from our friends. As I described my experience on Tweetdeck, Jon responded by saying that humans are pattern seekers. As we start to see new and better patterns, we change inside.
Our mental models change. We seek to share information rather than to horde it. We seek to learn rather than be right.
I think that we start to grow up. And talking about growing up. When Euan Semple recovers from his trip to OZ, we plan to talk about how the web will help us Grow Up.
